Somaliland is on the road to becoming Africa’s 55th state. In the shadow of the long-term catastrophic conditions in the Horn of Africa region remains the fact that the quasi-state of Somaliland has been thriving here for decades. Its history shows how the conditions in Africa today are still influenced by its colonial past.
By Linda Pikner
The news about the disintegration of Somalia, pirate attacks in the Horn of Africa and the activities of the Islamist militia Al-Shabaab, which have been flooding the media since the early 1990s, do not leave much room for us to think of a part of this state as a relatively stable piece of territory that is more has been operating de facto independently for more than thirty years. However, a recent memorandum signed between the prime minister of neighboring Ethiopia and representatives of the quasi-state Somaliland suggests that the prefix “quasi” is increasingly a formal euphemism rather than a reflection of reality. Current developments in Yemen are only adding to this trend.
Understanding the current flow of events that have an immediate global impact cannot be done without a short excursion into the history of the region known as the Horn of Africa, which is somewhat simplistically identified with Somalia.
The history of this highly strategic region on the borders of the Gulf of Aden connecting the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean began to be written in the modern era by Europeans, especially the British, the French, and to some extent also the Italians, who sought to secure the Suez Canal.
The area of historical Somalia as a territory inhabited by ethnic Somalis was thus divided, with the French gaining positions in present-day Djibouti, the British in Somaliland, and the Italians settling around Mogadishu. The rest of the Somalis remained in Ethiopia’s Ogaden province and British-ruled northern Kenya, which began to cause tension during the 20th century, and to this day the Somalia-Kenya border is considered one of the most dangerous in Africa.
The British presence in Somaliland was based on a series of treaties with representatives of local clans, through which they sought protection from the expansionism of the Ethiopian emperor Menelik II. As elsewhere in Africa, the British used a system of indirect rule, based on maintaining the rule of local structures, combined with a decisive influence in the field of foreign policy, determined by British interests.
Securing Red Sea navigation through outposts on the coast was part of Britain’s strategic vision of how to administer a vast empire as efficiently and cheaply as possible. In practice, it relied on a series of contracts with local political leaders.
In addition, the British sought to protect the thousand-year-old trade routes through which they secured meat supplies in what is now Yemen, and the region even earned the apt nickname “the butchery of Aden.” Although the region is now seen primarily as a synonym for misery, even today meat, especially goat and mutton, is an essential part of the local diet. The media image of the region, reduced to just a desert full of hungry refugees, thus takes on a slightly more realistic dimension.
Four days of independence
In the “Year of Africa” 1960, the winds of change also swept through the Horn of Africa, and Somaliland declared independence from Britain, which lasted exactly four days before the country was united with the Italian part that copied the coast of the Indian Ocean. Originally, the British and Italian administrations created one state, but in practice unification did not occur, partly because of their different colonial pasts.
For thirty years, no functioning infrastructure could be built connecting the two territories, which consequently meant that Somaliland did not care much about what was happening in the capital, which lay more than a thousand kilometers away. The connection from the Somaliland port of Berbera to Mogadishu was the shortest through the territory of Ethiopia, with which in the 1970s Somalia was at war precisely because of the eastern province of Ogaden, inhabited by ethnic Somalis.
The loss started not only the fall of the Somali regime of Siyad Barré, but also the total disintegration of a united Somalia, which lost its key ally — the USA — with the end of the Cold War. The end of financial support wiped out the entire regime, the country descended into civil war, and Somaliland declared independence, or rather declared its restoration, referring to a four-day episode in the 1960s.
The representatives of Somaliland brought the argument to the international environment that in those four days, thirty-five countries of the world, including the USA and Israel, recognized the sovereignty of the country. However, as fate would have it, Somaliland’s national archive was reduced to ashes, so we have to rely on oral tradition.
The declaration of independence from the beginning of the nineties is therefore not interpreted as an attempt at secessionism but as a re-establishment of the already-recognized independence. This should take the wind out of the sails of all those who argue that the recognition of Somaliland’s independence would start the disintegration of other African countries, including Nigeria and Mali.
Independence?
Perhaps, from our point of view, a somewhat tricky argumentation has turned out to be crucial in recent years. While Somalia has become a symbol of destruction, Somaliland is a territory that everyone wants to cooperate with. Since the early 1990s, the government in Hargeisa has consistently sought to build an identity of independence, supported by the adoption of a flag, anthem, and national symbols but also by spreading English and issuing its own passports.
The inability of the Mogadishu government to issue official documents created space for the establishment of Somaliland state institutions and the development of informal relations with the immediate environment. As a result, the Somaliland passport has a biometric form since 2014, and its holders can travel to, for example, Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Taiwan, but also Great Britain or France.
Politicians in Somaliland have understood that securing the borders and the associated security is the basis for strengthening on the international stage, which they are really doing well, making this part of the Horn of Africa an area that you can go to as an independent traveler. Air connections with Dubai, Saudi Jeddah or Ethiopian Addis Ababa and the possibility of obtaining a visa upon arrival at the international airport in Hargeisa contribute to this.
The fact that the country is open to the outside world naturally attracts not only travelers interested in beaches and unique natural scenery but also traders, which contributes to the diversification of the economy, traditionally dependent on the cattle trade.
Oil reserves have been discovered in part of the territory, and the large container port of Berbera has enormous potential, representing a real transport alternative to the port in Djibouti, which has reached its capacity limits. Compared to Francophone Djibouti, Somaliland’s Berbera also has the advantage that there is no foreign military base on its territory and the country is not a Chinese debtor due to ill-advised loans.
A decent economic perspective is strengthened by foreign remittances from abroad, as the Somaliland — and also the Somali — diaspora is one of the most active in the world. Emigrants living in Canada, but also in Ethiopia or Kenya, regularly send funds to the country, which represent a significant pillar of state income, and the administration uses them to cover, for example, the costs of building infrastructure.
By the way, the economic power of Somalis is astounding and shatters the stereotype that the country from which the world’s first African supermodel, Iman, hails from is a land of ruin. On the contrary, if you walk around some districts of the Ethiopian or Kenyan metropolis, you will find that the business here is fully in the hands of Somalis and the willingness to support their relatives in the home country is passed down from generation to generation.
Future?
On the first of January this year, Ethiopia and Somaliland signed a Memorandum of Understanding, the practical effect of which is to facilitate access to the port of Berbera and a twenty-kilometer strip of coast for the next twenty years.
The date has no symbolic dimension, as Ethiopia follows its own calendar several years behind ours, so to look for a hidden meaning behind the signing of a purely pragmatic treaty would be a misunderstanding of reality. Since 1993, when it lost Eritrea in a war, Ethiopia has been a landlocked country of 100 million people, desperately seeking access to the sea.
Given that there is latent tension bordering on civil war along the borders with Sudan and Eritrea, the infrastructure towards Kenya is poor, the ports in Djibouti and Somaliland remain in play. And while capacity in tiny Djibouti has hit its ceiling, Berbera is easily accessible.
In addition, the link between Addis Ababa and Berbera runs through the cities of Dire Dawa and Harar, which are key trade hubs in the eastern part of Ethiopia, supported by the existence of a railway between Dire Dawa and Addis Ababa. After all, Harar used to be referred to as one of the two truly Ethiopian cities.
The signing of the treaty opened the way for a gradual strengthening of the already negligible Ethiopian-Somaliland relations, in which the government in Hargeisa sees a tool to achieve full independence. The reasoning is based on a completely rational basis because it is Ethiopia that represents one of the key African regional powers and has expanded the number of states in the BRICS group since the beginning of this year.
This represents an important economic, but above all influential group, as two of its members are permanent members of the UN Security Council. If we consider that the United States, Great Britain and France continue to sit in the UN Security Council and that Somaliland does not have a significant problem with any of these powers, a unique opportunity opens up for the country to enjoy full sovereignty after decades.
The current situation in Yemen is also playing into Somaliland’s hands, where the American-British coalition is bombing rebel positions. While Yemen, or historical Aden, is a nightmare for all who have to sail through this part of the world, Somaliland, on the opposite bank of the Bab al-Mandab strait, supports international forces in ensuring security stability.
He is well aware of who the really influential and powerful allies are. At the end of the Yemeni crisis, there may be a new state on the map of Africa that already shows a higher level of functionality than the currently internationally recognized ones.
The author is a political scientist with a focus on Africa. As part of his professional focus, he mainly focuses on the issue of African integration, weak statehood, and selected topics from the field of development studies. She likes to travel, and her heart is Africa, which she visits regularly. In the past, she lectured at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the Faculty of Arts of the ZČU in Pilsen. She is currently a member of Expedition Z101, which in 2020-2023 wants to repeat the African and American part of Hansel and Sigismund’s journey.
